Welcome to Patricia Youngquist, The Last Leaf Gardener's blog. I'm an author, artist, and urban gardener living in NYC. My book, "Words In Our Beak Volume One," set in my rooftop garden is now in softcover format! It's a story told by Cam, the female cardinal, pictured above. For info click on the first icon in my blog's sidebar (L). It's also in digital format. Click on the second sidebar icon (L) for details. AND I have a website! Click on the third icon in that sidebar to visit it.

Wednesday, March 8, 2017

Today, March 8th, is one of my sister's birthdays. She can be seen in photo atop this entry, where she is on the lefthand side of the image, busily eating a drumstick, during a Thanksgiving dinner held in our home during bygone years. Because we grew up in the midwest, and because her birthday is in March, there were occasions that heavy snowfall prevailed on her birthday. We all recall that one year, when we were very young children, a major snowstorm occurred on her day, and she turned to my mother, and asked, "Doesn't God know it's my birthday?" My sister's day of March the 8th, coincides with an observance known as International Women’s Day.

Regarding the aforementioned event, there is a web-page which states, "For a lot of people in the U.S., International Women's Day just isn't that big of a deal. Before this year (1977) one could argue that few Americans knew this "holiday" existed. Others who did know about it likely shrugged it off as yet another hashtag holiday (see: National Peanut Butter Day) social media marketers created to get consumers' attention. While the organizers of the Women's March on Washington have helped bring greater attention to IWD, the first time it was observed was back in Feb. 28, 1908."

In fact, Cam is named for both of my maternal grandparents! Her name, Cam, is short for Clara Albert Melahn (Clara is my dearly departed maternal grandmother; Albert is my dearly departed maternal grandfather).

In any event, Cam is quite a forthright spokes-bird; and in her narrative, she aspires to raise awareness of all members of the avian community, but especially those who are cardinals. Cam's need to raise awareness stems from the fact that she understands what it is to be marginalized.
This is explained in the note to the reader at the onset of her book,“folks often dismiss (her) due to (her) — what some ornithologists have called — ‘dull coloring,’ and focus on the bright red males (cardinals).”

Within her book, Cam also states that a number of people choose the likeness of the male cardinal to create figurines;

and stuffed animals;

as she proclaims, "I've never seen either of these things rendered in the likeness of a female cardinal’s image, which I think is discriminatory!"

Cam admits that the female cardinal’s images are used atop a holiday coasters;

but, she has a good insight re this matter, when she confesses that seeing her "bird type’s image rendered into an item that a person rests a beverage on to protect it from another item, is not too good for (her) self esteem!"

However, in spite of her opinions re this matter, Cam concedes that she can understand why folks might want to render images of male cardinal into artifacts (by saying), "For I admit that I am — as are my female cardinal comrades — attracted to those handsome red guys too!" (This is certainly evidenced in the images directly below.)

And indeed female cardinals are attracted to the brightly colored males, "the redder, the better," (in terms of choosing a mate) Cam writes, and explains that one reason for "that because the colors of our gender’s bird type are muted giving us a protective camouflage, deep red coloring in the males of our bird type indicates they are healthy and might make good partners and fathers to our children. "

The color preference of a brightly colored male by a "dull-colored" (ahem) female bird holds true for a number of avian types, including house finches. An image of a female house finch alighting on the branches of my crabapple tree, can be seen directly below,

and the following pictures features her with her more brightly colored mate.

The first photograph above is one that is also included in my fauna-flora-insect-themed postcard collection, while the second image is included in one of my movies on Vimeo which can be viewed by clicking here. In any event, a number of cool facts, as well as a number of awesome images of house finches, can be found within Words In Our Beak Volume One.

A "dull" coloration versus "red" coloring, is not the only color assesment used to determine a bird's gender — as you may know.

The gender of a duck, for example, is very easy to determine by a quick glance of their coloring; as seen in the following pictures (which show — respectively — a female, a male, as well a female and male together).

In fact, any extreme color differences, are not the only way to identify the gender of a given bird. For example, it is a bit harder for folks to quickly determine the gender of a mourning dove as you might surmise from the photos that are directly below.

Both of these mourning dove themed photographs are included in Words In Our Beak Volume One; and the latter of them is also included in my fauna-flora-insect-themed postcard collection.

Be that as it may, as Cam has stated in her book (re determining this bird types gender), "in terms of mourning doves, males are a little larger and more colorful than females, with bluish iridescence on the crown and pink on the breast. The mourning dove's tail has long inner feathers, white on the edges, and tapers to a point. Their feet are dull red. Their beaks are thin and black. They have large dark spots on the upper surface of their wings. The wings make a whistling sound when the bird flies and they sometimes clap their wings together noisily above and below the body when they take off suddenly. Males and females have a small dark comma-shaped mark on both sides of the head below and behind the eyes. Their eyes are dark brown and ringed about with pastel blue skin. Their eyelids are blue too!"
And, with this info about mourning doves, I'll close this post re International Women's Day; and follow up within the coming days. After all, while, today may be International Women's Day, the ENTIRE month of March (in addition to being National Peanut Month [as mentioned yesterday]; as well as being Irish American Month [as discussed last year here on Blogger] is also labeled as National Women's History Month; please stay tuned!